Arar v. Ashcroft et al

Â On November 2, 2009, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in a 7-4
decision dismissed Canadian citizen Maher Arar's law suit against various U.S.
officials for their illegal role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and
interrogated for a year.Â Arar is a
victim of the U.S. government's kidnapping and torture program known as
extraordinary rendition. He is now also a victim of "American Justice"...

The appellate court ruled that Arar
can not utilize the courts to pursue his legal claims against the government
unless the government's legislative branch enacts legislation allowing him to
sue byÂ spelling out in detail how
a case as unusual as Arar's claims can be brought and what legal remedy exists.
The court stated that allowing the case to be heard would "offend the
separation of powers and inhibit this country's foreign policy." The court
went on to say it would not create "a new damages remedy that Congress has
not seen fit to authorize...Even the probing of these matters entails the risk
that other countries will become less willing to cooperate with the United
States in sharing intelligence resources to counter terrorism."Â

Â

In effect the court held that
justice for the individual was subservient to the needs of U.S. imperialism. It
also ruled that the government gets to decide who can sue it when individual
rights are violated and U.S. officials break the law. Ironically the government
gets to determine who and when someone can sue it.Â This is justice?

Â

Arar is represented by the Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR) which has repeatedly gone to court to challenge the actions of the
U.S. government in its illegal war of terror. The appellate
court concluded that Arar's case raised too many politically sensitive foreign
policy and secrecy issues to permit any judicial relief - in other words it
would expose the crimes of the U.S. government to the eyes of the world.Â
The court's decision leaves the federal officials involved in Arar's abuse free
of any legal accountability for the crimes they committed.

Â

Maher Arar issued the following statement in response to the court's action:
"After seven years of pain and hard struggle it was my hope that the court system
would listen to my plea and act as an independent body from the executive
branch. Unfortunately, this recent decision and decisions taken on other
similar cases, prove that the court system in the United States has become more
or less a tool that the executive branch can easily manipulate through
unfounded allegations and fear mongering. If anything, this decision is a loss
to all Americans and to the rule of law."

Â

The Obama Department of Justice
(DOJ) has repeatedly gone to court to cover-up and defend the actions of the
Bush regime in the U.S. war of terror. This case is just the latest in a long
line of such "national security" cases where the Obama administration has
furthered the fascist political trajectory begun under Bush.

Â

Georgetown law professor and CCR cooperating attorney
David Cole, who argued the Arar case stated, "This decision
says that U.S. officials can intentionally send a man to be tortured abroad,
bar him from any access to the courts while doing so, and then avoid any legal
accountability thereafter. It effectively places executive officials above the
law, even when accused of a conscious conspiracy to torture. If the rule of law
means anything, it must mean that courts can hear the claim of an innocent man
subjected to torture that violates our most basic constitutional
commitments."Â Â But that is
the problem - the rule of law means nothing to the U.S. government if it
interferes with the interests of the U.S. imperialists. They use the law to
suit their purposes and ignore it if it interferes with those purposes.

Â

CCR Senior Staff Attorney Maria LaHood said, "With this decision, we have
lost much more than Maher Arar's case against torture - we have lost the rule
of law, the moral high ground, our independent judiciary, and our commitment to
the Constitution of the United States."Â

Â

The Arar case was re-heard before
twelve Second Circuit judges after a rare decision in August 2008 to rehear the
case sua sponte,
that is, of their own accord before Arar had even sought rehearing.
This was a political decision to head off further exposures of U.S. government
crimes in the case, which has already exposed more than the government wanted
the public ever to know.

Â

Mr. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian
citizen, was detained at New York's JFK Airport in September 2002 while
changing planes on his way home to Canada. The Bush regime labeled him a member
of Al Qaeda and sent him not to Canada, his home and country of citizenship,
but against his will to Syrian intelligence authorities renowned for torture.
He was tortured, interrogated, and detained in a tiny underground cell for
nearly a year before the Syrian government released him, stating they had found
no connection to any criminal or terrorist organization or activity. Ironically,
Syria was on the U.S. State Department's list of countries that supported
terrorism and also of countries that violated human rights through torture.Â But the Bush regime and the Obama
administration have both repeatedly stated that they do not send "terrorism
suspects" to other countries to be tortured and that they receive a promise
from the country of rendition not to torture suspects. But that is just one of
many lies told by both administrations.

In January 2004, just three months after he returned home to Canada from his
ordeal, CCR filed a suit on Mr. Arar's behalf against then Attorney General John
Ashcroft and other U.S. officials, the first case to challenge the government's
policy of "extraordinary rendition," also known as "outsourcing torture."Â

The Canadian government conducted an exhaustive public inquiry which found that
Mr. Arar had no connection to terrorism and, in January 2007, apologized to Mr.
Arar for Canada's role in his rendition and awarded him a multi-million-dollar
settlement. But in the U.S., both the Executive and Judicial branches of the
United States government have barred inquiry into the case and refused to hold
anyone accountable for ruining the life of an innocent man. Nevertheless the
U.S. government has not been totally successful in keeping the case out of the
limelight.

Â

Two Congressional hearings in
October 2007 dealt with Arar's case. On October 18, 2007 Mr. Arar testified via
video at a House Joint Committee Hearing convened to discuss his rendition by
the U.S. to Syria for interrogation under torture.Â During that hearing -
the first time Mr. Arar was allowed to testify before any U.S. governmental
body - individual members of Congress publicly apologized to him, though the U.S.
government still has not issued a formal apology. The next week, on October 24,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to admit during a House Foreign Affairs
Committee Hearing that the U.S. government mishandled his case. Her real regret
is that the case became known to the public.

Â

The Arar is not the only
extraordinary rendition case to be heard in the U.S. courts where the Obama DOJ
has gone to court to suppress the truth.Â
The ACLU has filed a case against Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen
DataPlan Inc., for its role in the rendition program. Jeppesen provided
critical flight planning and logistical support services to aircraft and crews
used by the CIA to forcibly disappear people to detention and interrogation. In
that case DOJ is claiming that allowing the case to be heard would endanger
national security by disclosing "state secrets."Â The Jeppesen case is being heard before the 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals.

Â

In April of this year, a three-judge
panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court
dismissal of the lawsuit, brought on behalf of five men who were kidnapped,
forcibly disappeared, and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign
intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture. The
Obama administration's appeal of that decision will be heard by an "en
banc" panel of 11 judges.

Â

Ironically one of the judges who
sits on the 9th Circuit bench is Jay Bybee.Â Justice Bybee had to recuse himself
from hearing the case. Why?Â
Because Bybee was one of the lawyers in the Bush regime's DOJ who wrote
legal memos justifying torture, rendition and various other crimes of the
regime. Bybee was John Yoo's supervisor. His reward for his participation in
these crimes was a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.

Â

It says quite a
bit about American justice when judges must recuse
themselves because of complicity in the very crimes on which they must rule. Is
it any wonder to see outrageous rulings like that in Arar case?

Â

CCR
attorneys think it is likely that they will appeal the latest ruling in the
Arar case.Â World Can't Wait will
continue to report on this and other "national security" cases.